Achieve your Extended Fasting Goals with Tea!

Unleash the healthy potential within your body by fasting with tea! Bonus fact: Tea can actually make your extended fasting experience more enjoyable and manageable!

For starters, if you’d like to review a full breakdown on what happens to your body during a extended fasting, click here .

Here’s Why Tea and Extended Fasting are the Perfect Match

1. Helps increase satiety

It’s pretty normal to experience hunger pangs during intermittent and extended fasting.

Hunger pangs occur simply because our bodies have adapted to expecting food at certain times during the day.

So, how do we get around this hunger pang phenomenon if the goal is to experience the benefits of fasting?

The answer? TEA! It’s more than just something to sip when you’re thirsty. Green tea catechins have been proven to support healthy ghrelin levels.

Ok, so what the heck is ghrelin?

Ghrelin is a hormone known as the “hunger hormone,” and it is the main culprit of those hunger pangs. Furthermore, many of us experience lifestyle, environmental and biological stressors that can lead to a hormone imbalance which can actually set off hunger pangs that have NOTHING to do with a true need to eat.

Mind blowing, right?! I know.

One of the key components of adapting to intermittent and extended fasting is normalizing ghrelin levels. The body will eventually adjust to it’s new feeding schedule–meaning, minimal discomfort..

2. Supports calm energy

Compared to coffee, green tea has much less caffeine and it contains L-theanine, which has relaxing and anti-anxiety effects. It relaxes the mind without drowsiness and focus without the jitters. So, if you’re addicted to coffee then switching over to green tea may help you to still get a small boost in wakefulness without making you anxious.

L-theanine: An amino acid that promotes a state of calm, focused awareness. It is also known to support a state of mindfulness.

It’s no wonder why monks have been using tea for centuries to support their fasts and meditations!

3. Supports cell health

What makes tea such a unique beverage is the polyphenols contained in tea leaves.

Polyphenols are antioxidants that battle free radicals found in your body.

Ingesting polyphenols can help you support gut health and digestion, healthier skin, sustained energy, improved mental focus, and much more!

Drinking tea just might be one of the simplest (and most delicious) ways to get a high concentration of polyphenols into your diet on a daily basis.

Tea Can Promote Autophagy!

Tea can boost the effectiveness of intermittent/extended fasting by turning on autophagy faster.

Autophagy: “Auto” means self and “phagy” means eat. So, the literal meaning of autophagy is “self-eating.” Autophagy is an evolutionary self-preservation mechanism through which the body can remove the dysfunctional cells and recycle parts of them toward cellular repair and cleaning. It is recycling and cleaning at the same time, just like hitting a reset button to your body. Plus, it promotes survival and adaptation as a response to various stressors and toxins accumulated in our cells.

Did you know that there are many compounds in beverages that don’t break a fast or stop autophagy but actually INCREASE it? For example, the polyphenols in coffee can stimulate autophagy, but so do certain teas! Note: I recommend cycling off caffeine on a regular basis to allow your body to become re-sensitized.

The best teas that promote autophagy

If you’d like to get tea blends that have been specifically designed for people who do intermittent fasting, then check out Pique Tea. They have a variety of autophagy-boosting blends without artificial flavorings, fillers or sweeteners.

#1 Green Tea

Green tea has a long history of use in traditional Chinese medicine and other parts of the world. It’s made from the leaves of Camelia sinensis and has been shown to have many health benefits, including anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties.

EGCG (Epigallocatechin gallate) is the main polyphenol in green tea that’s been shown to stimulate autophagy in vascular endothelial cells as well as upon endoplasmic reticulum stress. It also reduces lipid accumulation, risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and bacterial infections. All of those benefits are primarily mediated by autophagy. (Source: Siim Land)

Green tea increases metabolic rate similar to coffee but only by up to 4% compared to the 11% of coffee. Green tea extract can raise rates of fat oxidation by 17% and insulin sensitivity by 13% for 24 hours.

#2 Matcha Tea

Both matcha and green tea come from the same plant, but matcha bushes are covered from sunlight about 20-30 days before harvest. This increases their chlorophyll levels, making the leaves look darker, and promotes the production of amino acids.

Instead of brewing the leaves, they’re ground into matcha powder and consumed with the brew. This way you’re ingesting more of the antioxidants and polyphenols, creating a more potent effect.

To reach the optimal dose for the health benefits you need about 100 mg-s of EGCG. 

A cup of regular green tea has about 80-86 mg-s, but matcha has over 130 mg-s per cup. Matcha also has over 10 times more L-theanine and 130 times more antioxidants because you’re also consuming the powder.

Here’s what I recommend:

So, does Matcha Tea break a fast because you’re consuming the leaves?

A cup of regular green tea has 2-3 calories. Matcha tea is said to be 2-3 calories per gram and on average you’ll end up using about 1-½ teaspoon of matcha powder per cup of tea. That’ll give you 6-10 calories per cup, which probably isn’t enough to break a fast. The polyphenols in the tea itself will also counterbalance those calories by stimulating autophagy. So, matcha tea will NOT break a fast unless you end up drinking more than 2 cups at once.

If you can’t make up your mind about which one to get, then check out Pique Tea’s Fasting Tea Power Bundle. It includes regular green tea with ginger and matcha green tea. The packets can mix with both cold and hot water and you can travel with them quite easily.

#3 Citrus Bergamot

Bergamot or Citrus bergamia is one of the main compounds in black tea. It gives Earl Grey tea it’s distinct and unique flavor.

Bergamot oil is extracted from citrus fruit, primarily bergamot oranges. It has anxiolytic, analgesic and neuroprotective properties. Studies show bergamot oil aromatherapy can reduce anxiety, stress, and mood disorders.

Most conventional black and Earl Grey teas don’t have the antioxidants and polyphenols because they’ve been replaced with artificial flavorings and peels from other citrus. That’s why you would want to read the label and see what the actual ingredients are.

Pique Tea has both Green Tea Bergamot as well as Black Tea Bergamot. You can also get them as a bundle:

#4 Herbal Tea

There are dozens of different kinds of herbal teas like jasmine, chamomile, peppermint, echinacea, etc. They all have (practically) no calories and probably won’t break a fast. If anything, they’ll actually BOOST autophagy.

• Echinacea tea strengthens the immune system and fights infections.
• Chamomile tea helps with relaxation and sleep.
• Peppermint tea can alleviate symptoms of digestion problems.
• Ginger tea fights nausea, constipation and digestion problems.
• Turmeric has strong anti-inflammatory properties.
• Ginseng stabilizes blood sugar levels and promotes hormonal health.
• Hibiscus tea has been shown to lower hypertension and lipids.
• Rooibos tea can lower oxidative stress and blood pressure
• Lemon balm tea has been shown to improve elasticity of the arteries
• Rosehip tea will lower inflammation and pain

None of these teas break a fast and they’ll help the body’s autophagic processes in some way as well. While there are no specific studies on autophagy, they’ll at least help to fight inflammation and infections, which then gives you more resources to go through autophagy at other regions.

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